BART station enlists hawk to deter pigeon population
For years, pigeons and their poop have menaced BART’s El Cerrito del Norte Station, and efforts to shoo them away from the above surface station went nowhere.
That changed in late May when the rail agency turned to a novel solution by enlisting the help of a predator named Pac-Man — a male 6-year-old Harris’ hawk.
In just a few weeks, PacMan’s presence at El Cerrito del Norte has resulted in notably fewer pigeons, who are wary of becoming the hawk’s prey, according to both BART and Falcon Force, the professional bird abatement business hired by the agency.
Pigeons can be a nuisance to riders and staff — but more important, their droppings can carry bacteria harmful to humans, and pigeon populations at BART stations can swell for years if unaddressed.
Pac-Man can be seen patrolling the station with the help of his human handler eight hours a day, three days a week.
Wahid Amiri, a project manager at BART, said in an agency news release that BART made several attempts to limit the station’s pigeon population, but “nothing was successful.”
Nets to trap pigeons didn’t work — neither have the hundreds of “bird-repellent spikes” BART staff fastened to ledges, fare machines and other surfaces that attract pigeons. Owl statues meant to mimic a predator also were ineffective.
So, BART went with PacMan, a captive-bred hawk who sparks terror in pigeons and awe in BART riders who’ve caught the raptor in action in recent weeks.
“It’s a much greener, much more sustainable type of program because nothing is hurt, nothing is killed,” Vahé Alaverdian, founder of Falcon Force, told The Chronicle. “They (the pigeons) just determine that this is not a safe place to be and move on.”
Pac-Man is a Harris’ hawk, which is a relatively sociable subspecies of hawk that is sometimes compared to wolves because they live and hunt in groups in the wild, Alaverdian said. This type of bird is “extremely adaptable” to noisy and chaotic environments, such as a BART station, Alaverdian said.
This isn’t the first time BART has turned to animals for its problems. In recent summers, the rail agency has used herds of Spanish-Boer cross goats to graze dry vegetation on its property to help minimize fire risks.
El Cerrito del Norte isn’t the only station with a pigeon problem. Other open-air stations such as San Leandro, Hayward and Balboa Park are grappling with a proliferation of the birds.